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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24362677">Breathe</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/stateofintegrity/pseuds/stateofintegrity'>stateofintegrity</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>MASH (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>M/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 10:15:42</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,536</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24362677</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/stateofintegrity/pseuds/stateofintegrity</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Klinger doesn't understand army paperwork very well, but he has a good handle on his feelings.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Maxwell Klinger/Charles Emerson Winchester III</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Breathe</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Sherman Potter poked his hard-bitten but loveable face into the office of his company clerk. “Son, I’m a little flummoxed by this paperwork.” He hated even saying it because, honestly, in the weeks since Radar had returned to Iowa, Klinger had come into his own as a clerk.</p><p>The man looked crestfallen at this potential foul up. “I’m sorry, Colonel. You know how OR has been,”</p><p>Potter held up a hand. “I know you’re helping out ten ways to Tuesday. And this slip up doesn’t affect anyone but you, anyway. Son, can you explain this notation in your file?” </p><p>Klinger looked at where he was pointing. “Just what it says, Colonel.” </p><p>The CO’s nostrils flared - partly from mirth and partly from exasperation. “Klinger, a DNR takes effect when a patient can’t be brought back to an acceptable state of life. Machines have to breathe for you or your brain’s so hurt there’s no ‘you’ left. Started making ‘em army regulation after WWI, when we ‘saved’ some poor fellows we shoulda let go.”</p><p>Klinger listened to this with the top-student patience he always gave the Colonel- a sign of respect which he believed Potter more than merited. Potter returned his affection, too; the boy was a pleasure to teach and a joy to work beside - and that bit with the stole and the heights had been a real hoot.</p><p>“I know all that, sir.” </p><p>“And you must know then, Klinger, that we love you at the 4077th and, God forbid, but if something were to happen, we would save you - and we wouldn’t bring you back worse off, right?”</p><p>“Sure, sir.” </p><p>“So what you’ve written here is what? A lark? A dig?” </p><p>Klinger’s face didn’t change. “No, sir. I mean, I know it might not be possible, you know, if wounded were coming in, but I figured I could have a preference.” </p><p>“And Winchester’s it, huh?”</p><p>“Yes, sir.”</p><p>Potter shook his head. “Oh, Klinger. You sure do take the cake. How long has this been going on?” He saw the man get nervous and put on his best horse-gentling tone. “It’s okay, Corporal. I’m not gonna give you any static.” <em> And neither will anyone else if I can help it.  </em></p><p>Confiding in anyone beyond his Uncle was a new experience for the clerk - and he sure hadn’t been expecting to talk about <em> this </em>. “You’re sure it’s okay, sir? I mean, I don’t want to bother you or upset you or anything.”</p><p>“I’ve been around awhile, son. What people do in the privacy of their tents doesn’t weigh much on my mind as long as nobody’s getting hurt. Go ahead and have your say.” </p><p>The truth was, Potter worried that Klinger <em> might </em> get hurt. He was such an earnest thing. And for all his rank and experience, the CO couldn’t predict what would happen if he held his heart out to Winchester like a fresh-picked bouquet. He’d seen several of his officers through bouts of heartbreak - Pierce, Margaret, even Frank - but he’d never mother-henned over them the way his instinct was telling him to do over Klinger. <em> If you break, it’ll go hard </em> , he silently predicted, <em> and I’m in no hurry to see your hands all bloody with holding the pieces together.  </em></p><p>“I don’t know exactly when it started, sir. It wasn’t like the movies where,” he snapped his fingers, “you know just like that. At first, I just liked that I could get under his skin. He’d come back at me with all those fancy words he likes to use, but I could tell he was having fun, too.” </p><p>No one outside of a 59 year-old housewife in Missouri knew about it, but Potter had seen the similarities in his new clerk and his newest surgeon right away. “They pull well together,” he had written Mildred, applying, as he so often did, the language of his beloved horses to the people he loved (and loved to observe). “They’re no matched pair - more like a wily little mule and a registered warmblood with fine breeding going back two hundred years, a Hanoverian, maybe - but you watch them together and you can see it. Winchester won’t bend for many things, but he’ll hold himself to Klinger’s height without noticing- and Klinger will get up on his toes so he doesn’t have to bend quite so far, even if those toes are in pumps!” </p><p>Potter motioned the clerk on. “But something happened to change how you looked at him. It must have if you’re thinking up ways to get his mouth on yours - even unconscious.” </p><p>Klinger blushed. “It was just a <em> preference </em>, sir. I don’t think it’ll actually work. And I’ve seen CPR. The mouth stuff doesn’t look too bad but I don’t want the bruises.” </p><p>Potter shook his finger at him. “You’re old hat at running scams, Corporal. Figured you’d just make it <em> look </em> like you needed revived. The old damsel in distress routine.”</p><p>“Well, if you really think I should, Colonel…”</p><p>“Nothing of the kind. Winchester won’t look kindly on you tricking him. You still haven’t said what made you set your cap for him, by the way.” </p><p>“Lots of little things. The look on his face when he gets a letter from his sister. The way he kinda looks out for me in OR. If things get bad, I look up and he’ll look at me and just give this little nod. Or when we head out to triage, he’ll say ‘chin up, Max,’ and I won’t want to throw up for a couple of minutes.” </p><p>Potter had closed his eyes. He wore a small, faraway smile. </p><p>“Sir?”</p><p>“Hmm?”</p><p>“Did I say something wrong, sir?” </p><p>“No. You just had me thinking of Mildred. People go to the movies and they think love is a string section and roses and perfect words, but I think you’ve got a better handle on it than all those Hollywood writers put together, Klinger. It is the little things in the end. In the beginning, too, probably. The stuff no one else would ever see. Or seeing - ever realize.” </p><p>Klinger’s eyes were huge. “You think I’m in love, sir?”</p><p>“Why sure. What did you think you were?”</p><p>“An idiot?”</p><p>“Practically the same thing.” </p><p>Klinger tried to absorb the knowledge. Love, huh? The real thing? It was exciting and terrifying all at once and he kind of wished Charles were there to “chin up” him over this because his stomach had gone a little sideways with the news. </p><p>“What do I do, sir?”</p><p>“Well, honestly, I don’t know. If it were anyone else, I feel like I could give you odds on the outcome and have more than half a chance at being right. If it was Pierce, say, I think he’d take to anyone who showed him any kind of genuine care.” The boy was half-starved for it and had been as long as Potter had known him. “Sure, I can’t talk you into swapping surgeons?” </p><p>Klinger laughed. “The Swamp is full of good guys, Colonel,”</p><p>“But only one that turns your head, huh? That’s usually the way these things go. I guess you have to make a decision then.”</p><p>“Tell him or not?”</p><p>“Mm-hmm. I can’t say how he’ll react though, Klinger. Winchester has some pretty strict ideas about how his life ought to go. From what I can make out, his parents have been nothing but rotten to him, but they want him to get married and have kids. He hasn’t slipped on that yoke, yet, but I think he might mean to.” </p><p>Klinger looked a little sad. “I know. I, uh, I’ve seen what kind of gal they’d like for him.”</p><p>“Radar taught you his best tricks, did he?”</p><p>“I never open Mrs. Potter’s letters, though, sir. Honest.” </p><p>“I never thought it hurt Pierce too much to have his magazines pre-read. Then they open to the best parts, right?”</p><p>“Right.”</p><p>“So, these high society dames they write about - you couldn’t pull off the outfits?” </p><p>His soul sparkled as laughter raced up his throat. “Gimme some credit, sir. Not only can I make them, which those debutantes sure don’t, I don’t have to use a corset to fit in ‘em. Thank you, mess tent chow.”</p><p>“I always tell the other brass I have the clerk with the tiniest waist and the hairiest legs.” </p><p>“And, see, that might be the problem, sir.”</p><p>“You can shave.”</p><p>“Not that! It’s still <em> me </em> in the dress, right? No money, no blue blood, no connections.” </p><p>“Winchester has enough of all three for both of you and it hasn’t made him happy. Or let me put it another way. When I was courting Mildred, she had other prospects. Better ones, to my mind. Taller ones, for one thing. Men who didn’t live on an army base. But you can’t choose for somebody else, see? I would have picked one of those other studs for Mildred, but she picked me. I might be wrong, but I doubt the Winchester clan is doing a bang up job picking for the Major.” </p><p>Klinger swallowed. “I’ll have to think about it, sir.” </p><p>Colonel Potter patted him on the shoulder. “Think hard, son. And good luck.” </p><p>***</p><p>Colonel Potter didn’t meddle in the private lives of the men and women under his command… usually. Now, knowing what he knew about the heart of Maxwell Q. Klinger, decided not to play matchmaker, exactly, but to provide Klinger with some small amount of comfort. Given how very much the boy wanted to be back home, it seemed a small enough thing to sit down beside the imposing Major and ask him to look in on him from time to time. </p><p>Winchester surprised him by being amenable (as much as he ever was), only asking, “An order, Colonel?”</p><p>“A favor. I’m getting up there, Winchester. Looking after all these kids is a tall order some days. And you know as well as I do that no draft board should have taken Klinger. He’s not made for this.”</p><p>Winchester barked a dry laugh. “I share his feelings.” </p><p>“Sure, but your hands don’t shake.”</p><p>“Thankfully not, for the sake of my patients. But, yes, I’ve seen. Usually at the end of a shift.”</p><p>Well, wasn’t <em> that </em> curious? If Winchester had seen, it meant he was looking, anyway. That was something. A slender something, maybe, but better than nothing. “It might end up being the best bit of doctoring you do here,” Potter said before taking his leave. “You seem to make him feel better, anyway, and that’s no small thing.” </p><p>***</p><p>Winchester was a brilliant man. </p><p>It didn’t take him long to notice that in checking on Klinger, he was capable of changing the quality of light in his dark eyes. </p><p>Concerned, he took himself to the office of the man who had charged him with seeing to the Corporal’s wellbeing. “Colonel?”</p><p>Potter looked up as he entered, read his eyes as accurately and as quickly as Winchester had read the Corporal’s, and poured two tumblers of whiskey. Winchester took the glass when it was offered, but held it too long, looking, Potter thought, young and helpless and gentle and lost. </p><p>“Sit before you fall, Winchester,” he told the man. “And when you’ve managed that, tell me what’s keeping you up nights.”</p><p>The look he got for that was almost pleading. “How did you, that is,”</p><p>Potter stopped him. It paid to get in quick with Winchester. When the man was nervous or upset, he went into his linguistics professor routine. “I’ve had this job awhile, Major. I know what sleepless looks like. You could’ve come sooner, you know. The door’s always open.”</p><p>“Thank you, sir. However I am not accustomed,”</p><p>“You don’t like to ask for help. I know it. And for all that you won’t want to hear it, I’ll tell you right here and right now that you’re no less for doing so. Now, let’s bring this colt into the pasture. What’s got you counting the hours ‘til dawn instead of the interest on your accounts?”</p><p>“Well, Colonel, not to put too fine a point on it - but <em> you </em>.”</p><p>“Me?”</p><p>“What you asked me to do, looking after Corporal Klinger…”</p><p>Maybe he wasn’t going to get the academic, eloquent, and allusion-ready version of Winchester. The man looked terrified. A little levity then. “Is he wearing you out talking alterations and earrings? I’ve gotten to where I can tune him out ‘til he gets to the important part, but he could talk the spots off an Appaloosa if he was of a mind to.” </p><p>“No. Sir, Colonel, I don’t know how to say this.”</p><p>Potter patted him on the shoulder affectionately. “Let me give it a shot. You’ve been looking after our young Corporal and in the time you’ve been at the job, he’s gone and brightened up and bloomed like a prairie rose. Sound right so far?”</p><p>Winchester nodded, face seeming to pale with the motion. </p><p>“And you’ve tried to account for the change, but the only difference seems to be that you’re around a little more than you were. Which leaves you with just one possible diagnosis.”</p><p>“You knew then, sir? Surely you didn’t intend that,”</p><p>Potter held up a hand. “I kept you here, Major, because you’re a gifted surgeon and because we needed you. But I’d no sooner manipulate you than I would order Pierce into his uniform. I was just looking out for the boy. I didn’t expect anything more of you than a measure of kindness. If you’ve been as kind as you can be, then I’ll excuse you from the job.”</p><p>“And assign someone else?”</p><p>“Of course. Klinger won’t feel safe until he’s in Ohio again. He bears a little watching, a little tending. But if you’ve done all you can,” he shrugged, “there’s no shame in saying so.”</p><p>Winchester looked worse, now, than he had when he’d entered the tent. “I don’t know what to do, Colonel.”</p><p>“Ahh.” Potter actually sounded pleased to hear it. “Might be that I have a prescription for that, too. Bring your drink. We’re going on a field trip.” </p><p>Befuddled, Winchester meekly followed his much shorter CO into the main office. Potter took his time rummaging around; he wanted more of the fortifying whiskey in Winchester’s glass to end up <em> inside </em> of Winchester. Finally, he “discovered” the thing he’d been seeking and passed it along. Eyes as sharp as those of the bird on his collar, the Colonel watched Winchester read, saw him smile in spite of himself, watched him look up for confirmation. </p><p>“Klinger wrote this? On his own? Well, obviously on his own, given his grasp of medicine…”</p><p>Potter shook a finger at him. “The boy isn’t educated, true enough. But he’s A-ok with you being the air he breathes. You getting any better offers?”</p><p>“No.” He sat still for a long time.</p><p>“Alright then. So do I assign someone else to look after my pedal-pusher-wearing paper pusher?” </p><p>“Colonel, you have enough to occupy you without scanning the roll for my replacement. I will keep on with this task.” </p><p>“Good man.”</p><p>When Winchester left, Potter smiled, knowing the Major would be able to sleep now… just maybe not by himself. </p><p>End!</p>
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